the Princess Giauhara th. 33

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will love you as long as I live. Permit me, then, beauteous
princess! to have the honour to go and present you to the king
my .uncle; and the king your father shall no sooner have
consented to our marriage, than King Saleh will leave him
sovereign of his dominions as before?

This declaration of King Beder did not produce the effect he
expected. When the princess heard from his own mouth that he
had been the occasion of the ill-treatment her father had suffered,
of the grief and fright she had endured, and especially the
necessity she was reduced to of flying her country, she looked
upon -him as an enemy with whom she ought to have nothing

_ whatever to do.

'.. King Beder, believing himself arrived at the very pinnacle
of happiness, stretched forth his hand, and taking that of the princess,
stooped down to kiss it, when she, pushing him’ back, said,
‘ Wretch, quit ‘that form of a man, and take that of a white bird,
with a red bill and feet” Upon her pronouncing these words, King
Beder was immediately changed into a bird of that sort, to his
great surprise and mortification. ‘Take him,’ said she to one of her
women, ‘and carry him to the Dry Island” This island was only
one frightful rock, where there was not a drop of water to be had.

The waiting-woman took the bird, and in executing her princess’s
orders had compassion on King Beder’s destiny. ‘It would be a great
pity,’ said she to herself, ‘to let a prince, so worthy to live, die of
hunger and thirst. The princess, so'good and gentle, will, it may
be, repent of this cruel order when she comes to herself: it were
better that I carried him to a place where he may die a natural
death.’ She accordingly carried him to -a well-frequented island,
and left him in a charming plain, planted with all sorts of fruit-
‘trees, and watered by several rivulets.

Let us return to King Saleh. After he had sought a good.
while for the Princess Giauhara, and ordered others to seek for her,

: D